Dozens of Thurston County residents returned their ballots to a county drop box Saturday morning as part of an organized effort to encourage early voting in the Nov. 3 midterm election.
Olympia Indivisible and Evergreen Resistance, along with several other coalition partners, organized a “Ballot Drop March” the morning of Saturday, Oct. 17, ahead of a planned “No Kings IV” protest at the state Capitol campus that afternoon.
The fourth iteration of the “No Kings” protest is part of a nationwide series of rallies opposing President Donald Trump and his administration ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Calling the planned events in Thurston County “nonpartisan,” organizers said the gatherings would include information on “voting early, using ballot drop boxes and not USPS mailboxes, tracking your ballot and learning how to protect the election after voting.”
Thurston County Auditor Mary Hall met marchers outside of the Thurston County Atrium, which hosts a county voting center and one of Thurston County’s 31 official drop boxes.
This election marks Hall’s last as Thurston County’s elected auditor, as she is retiring when her term ends at the end of the year.
She recently received a national lifetime achievement award recognizing her 30 years in election administration and the work she has done to expand voter accessibility and elections security.
“It has been truly an honor to serve in this position, and I really, really appreciate all of your support over the years,” Hall told the crowd Saturday. “The excellent work will continue. We've got an amazing team.”
Hall thanked the gathered crowd for voting early and for using a drop box, encouraging other voters to do the same.
The Thurston County Elections Division has stated that using an official drop box is the only way to guarantee that the auditor’s office receives a ballot in time for their vote to be counted.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) does deliver every ballot received, but they must be postmarked by 8 p.m. on election day to count, and there is often a delay between when the ballot is put in the mail and when it is postmarked.
Recent federal changes to USPS operations have also delayed mail delivery.
Hall reported that in the August primary election, her office received an unprecedented 70 ballots from USPS after the election had already been certified, meaning that they could not be counted.
Ballot drop boxes are regularly emptied by county elections staff, meaning the ballots go directly to the ballot processing center.
Ballot drop boxes are open 24 hours a day, every day through 8 p.m. on Nov. 3.
County budget cuts and operational changes within the auditor’s office mean that Thurston County Elections no longer counts ballots on election night.
Staff has been working diligently since military and overseas ballots were mailed Sept. 18 to count early ballots as they come in, and will have a count of the early ballots to release 8 p.m. on Nov. 3.
Those results will be updated daily as workers continue to count ballots through election certification day,
As of Thursday, Oct. 15, Hall estimated that elections staff had counted 10 to 11,000 ballots, roughly 5 to 6% of the county’s eligible voter population.
The voter turnout for the August primary in Thurston County was 40%, with 86,435 ballots cast.
The more people who turn in their ballots early, the closer the initial results released Nov. 8 will be to the final results, Hall said.
A list of ballot drop boxes and addresses is included in the mailed ballot materials and online at ThurstonWAVotes.gov. The site also contains general information about the Nov. 3 election in Thurston County.
Ballots were mailed to all registered voters in Thurston County on Oct. 8.
Any registered voter who thinks they should have received a ballot but hasn’t by Thursday, Oct. 15 should contact the elections division at 360-786-5408 or elections@co.thurston.wa.us.
